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Chris Christie's flop at the GOP convention

'I thought it was a tremendous disappointment,' said a strategist about Christie's speech. | AP Photo

Obama, who clearly made lightning, talked about himself a lot, just like Christie, who is dealing with the blowback from his lightning-bug speech. Obama got half-way through his call for a new brand of politics before mentioning Kerry 13 times.

Cuomo, in contrast, mentioned nominee Walter Mondale exactly zero times. His speech was primarily an attack — written in lyrical, almost elegiac language — against President Ronald Reagan. Some commentators on Wednesday were surprised Christie did not make a more aggressive case against Obama.

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What Christie is facing may be something close to what Clinton faced at the Atlanta convention. Clinton, then 42, gave a perfectly fluent speech. But, like Christie’s, his appearance had been preceded by great anticipation because the Arkansas governor was being widely touted as the future of the party. It was clear that his words bored delegates in the convention hall, who were shown on TV paying no attention as Clinton droned on (for 33 minutes but it felt far longer) and mocked him with his only sustained applause line when he announced “in conclusion.”

Christie may be facing something similar to Clinton. The commentary about how poorly he did grew louder and more scathing as the media echo chamber, including late-night comedians, roared into high gear. He rescued himself from flames with a sterling performance on “The Tonight Show,” in which he joked that the speech “wasn’t my finest hour — it wasn’t even my finest hour-and-a-half.”

In Tampa, it is clear the echo chamber is once again kicking into gear.

“He doesn’t mention Mitt Romney’s name until the 16-minute mark,” screamed part of a New York Daily News headline on Christie’s speech. “Chris Christie accepts the nomination a bit early,” echoed a Salon article.

“Christie will take some (justified) criticism for spending 95 percent of his speech talking about himself and five percent talking about Mitt Romney. (And that’s being generous),” wrote The Washington Post’s Chris Cillizza.

Daily Beast/Newsweek’s Howard Kurtz said the speech made it seem like the two did not even know each other. “Romney was almost an afterthought. There wasn’t a personal line about Mitt. It was as though the two had never met,” Kurtz wrote.

“Christie’s prime time address seemed as much about positioning himself for 2016 and polishing his still developing national image,” read the National Journal’s analysis on the speech, while a Yahoo News roundup on voter reactions summed the address up as “likable, honest but lacking Romney focus.”

A prominent GOP strategist told POLITICO that “if Democrats had a drinking game for every time he mentioned Romney, they all ended up sober [at] the end of the night.”

“This speech not only was a bad speech. I think this was one of the most remarkable acts of political selfishness I have ever seen,” said MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow on Tuesday evening. “He waited 1,800 words into a 2,600-word speech to even bring [Romney] up.”

PAST........time to move these dirty radical liberal/progressives fascists out of our Free Press: Is The Media Coordinating On Race Baiting? Ask John Harris and Politico

By: Erick Erickson (Diary) | August 29th at 09:48 AM | 12

We should not forget that John Harris of the Politico, who asked the stupidest and most irrelevant questions of any moderator during the GOP Primary debates, is married to the former head of NARAL in Virginia.

We should not forget that Jonathan Allen of the Politico once worked for Debbie Wasserman Schultz.

We should not forget that Andy Barr of the Politico left the Politico to go work for the Democratic National Committee.

We should not forget any of this because I do not believe it is any accident that today the Politico has a big story from John Harris about race in the 2012 election.

I think you should go listen to the speach again cuz you missed the gist. We are supposed to vote for the person we respect, not love. It was ALL about Romney. We respect him becuase he doesn't need to be loved, and so he can do the hard stuff. Are you sure you aren't being racist? ha? ;-{

Who'd have thought that Ann Romney would give a better speech than Chris Christie?

He came off as more obnoxious than strong. He went off on his own, all about him and tried to define both parties in his own way. The them and the us was flat, self serving and dishonest. In other words, boring.

I always figured that Christie was betting against Romney but I thought he'd have enough political savvy to make a better show of support as well as do a better job of promoting himself.

What an asinine portrayal of an outstanding, inspiring speech. I've been hearing some of this all day, and it's simply B.S. The man was on fire. If we don't know what's wrong with Barack Obama by now, we're not going to 'realize' it by having Chris Christie shout it at us at the convention. If we don't know who the nominee is, or who Chris Christie is voting for, then we don't belong in the political world. It was a great speech, showing a clear delineation between what Democrats and Republicans believe . . . . . period.

Somehow I don't think it is Romney and Christie who are pushing this story. Seeing as how the only person that any of this benefits is Obama, it seems more like you are giving us his perspective. (Or at least the way he wants us to see things.)